RE: [DDN] Literacy level falls for US college graduates (fwd)
Hi All, Maybe it isn't the technology that is causing a decline in literacy skills development but a dearth and lack of support for library services in schools not only in the US but around the world. Kids learn to read using concrete objects first (to do with the nature of learning to read) and school libraries are where they not only learn to maintain and expland their literacy skills, but they also acquire a reading habit. No qualified teacher librarian, leads to poor resource selection and no reading or literature/literacy promotion across all levels of the school. A reminder - computers and not compensatory. If students have poor traditional literacy skills, they will not be able to use a computer effectively or efficiently to gain information either. Reading is about both the deconstruction of printed language and the construction of meaning/understandings. Computers actually require the user to have a range of other literacy skills on top of the traditional reading, writing, listening and viewing. Falling literacy skills in students coming into tertiary education are a reflection of the way many educators and the media have tried to divorce the acquisition and maintenance of literacy skills from print resources and the library in schools. Too often the first place for funding and staff cuts is the school library. After all, why do we need a library? And yet all the research indicates that students who read widely and who read fiction, also have advanced literacy skills and are more successful academically (PISA 2000). It is about time that we stopped expecting the Internet and technology to provide all the answers. It is not a cure, but a toolkit. At this point in time the only real major issue with technology from an information science perspective is that it is steadily increasinbg the number of formats and delivery modes for information/fiction and nonfiction. In our profession we have issues with being able to cater for this expanding toolkit, preservation and longterm storage of information and basic access in a world where good information is fast becoming an expensive commodity. Until we move beyond this fixation with the toolkit (technologies) and once again value learning/education and what libraries have to offer, fund and staff school libraries appropriately, literacy skills will continue to fall or at best, remain static. :) BC Convenor for the Transforming Information and Learning Conference http://www.chs.ecu.edu.au/TILC Barbara Combes, Lecturer School of Computer and Information Science Edith Cowan University, Perth Western Australia Ph: (08) 9370 6072 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation. Walter Cronkite This email is confidential and intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you are notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please notify me immediately by return email or telephone and destroy the original message. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dr. Steve Eskow Sent: Monday, 19 December 2005 4:41 AM To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group Subject: RE: [DDN] Literacy level falls for US college graduates (fwd) Here is an important conclusion from a Department of Education official: Grover J. Whitehurst, director of an institute within the Department of Education that helped to oversee the test, said he believed that the literacy of college graduates had dropped because a rising number of young Americans in recent years had spent their free time watching television and surfing the Internet If that is so it would appear that the new communication technologies can become the problem rather than the solution. An article in this Sunday's New York Times by David Carr, a new owner of a video iPod, seems to confirm thehy ypothesis that those who own the newest digital technologies tend to move away from the reading of complex materials that develops and sharpens the skills that are declining. Carr reports that since owning his new device he spends far less time reading and now uses that time to watch episodes of television dramas. If we think that the ability to read complex materials is a requirement for competence in our time, do we need to think about the part that the new technologies play in either deepening or eroding those skills? Can the computer improve complex reading skills? Or will it inevitably lead to their decline? Steve Eskow [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Andrew Pleasant Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2005 10:47 AM To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group Subject: Re: [DDN] Literacy level falls for US college graduates (fwd) Hi all, Listened to the original webcast
RE: Re: [DDN] Intellectual Property Rights
Need to remember that academic publishers generally do very limited print runs and hence the price of their books will be high. We need to remember that just because it is in digital format doesn't mean that copyright may be violated. Especially now that information is often someone's livelihood. The propensity of people to copy and paste and disseminate information freely electronically also dissipates the authority of the information - who actually wrote it and is it correct, have authority? Copyright and authority add value to information products - why we need to ensure that this concept does not die just because the information is in electronic format rather than print. :) BC Convenor for the Transforming Information and Learning Conference http://www.chs.ecu.edu.au/TILC Barbara Combes, Lecturer School of Computer and Information Science Edith Cowan University, Perth Western Australia Ph: (08) 9370 6072 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation. Walter Cronkite This email is confidential and intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you are notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please notify me immediately by return email or telephone and destroy the original message. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, 14 October 2005 4:28 AM To: The Digital Divide Network discussiongroup; The Digital Divide Network discussiongroup Subject: Re: Re: [DDN] Intellectual Property Rights I agree with you on almost everything you say, Claude. The exception is the possible suggestion -- I'm not sure you mean to say this -- that because print piracy has such a long history, we should be grateful that digital piracy is less threatening Just the fact that Yahoo and Google announce that they are going to scan all the books in some eminent libraries, and don't explain (as you did) that only public-domain material can be legally digitized, does seem to give tacit permission for scanning of anything and everything. And the academic publishers have certainly been asking for trouble for a long, long time, by pricing their books and journals at a level that only research libraries can actually buy them. And yes, there are supposed legal protections in some of the worst piracy countries, and they work a bit better now than they did 20 years ago. I served as President and CEO of Harcourt Brace for several years and had the honor of being bodily thrown out of a bookstore in Taiwan because a colleague and I were trying to buy pirated versions of Academic Press titles so that we could file legal objections Nonetheless: my point is that many people have no idea that the right to copy something multiple times does not become yours when you buy a book or CD or DVD. We need to encourage people, I think, to consider the economic and intellectual consequences of this ignorance. Sarah Blackmun From: Claude Almansi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2005/10/13 Thu PM 03:22:03 EDT To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [DDN] Intellectual Property Rights Sarah Blackmun wrote: Does anyone else think it is unethical (as well as illegal) to digitize works that are protected by copyright? It can be unethical and illegal in some cases, but Taran Rampersad, whom you seem to be answering was only speaking using Optical Character Recognition with texts photographed in the library. - If the digitalized copy is for your personal use and study, it is legal. - If the work copied is in the public domain, it is even legal to distribute it or put it online. - What would be illegal would be to distribute and/or put online a work protected by copyright Don't the writers and producers of intellectual and artistic property own their works and have the right to control how they are distributed? Yes, but copyright laws allow readers to make a personal copy for studying purposes. And a text version is far more handy for studying than a PDF. Not to mention that blind people will anyway have to translate PDFs or image formats into text, by using OCR. (Don't Google and Yahoo and the university libraries know this? Of course they do!) Not exactly: the Google project was halted precisely because of the copyright issue. The Très Grande Bibliothèque Nationale of France so far has only scanned and put on line PDFs, which seem locked - and the ones I have seen are all in the public domain. I have not seen the Yahoo ones Do we have on this list any authors in the group who depend for their livings (or a part thereof) on the royalties they receive from books, music, film, etc
RE: [DDN] information society terminology - e vs i ICT vs IC
Hi DDN listers, In The Information Science world the 'e' merely denotes delivery method/format. Everything is information. By the way, we are puiblkishing more in print than ever before. So much for computers heralding a paperless society! :) BC @ Your Library Barbara Combes, Lecturer School of Computer and Information Science Edith Cowan University, Perth Western Australia Ph: (08) 9370 6072 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation. This email is confidential and intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you are notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please notify me immediately by return email or telephone and destroy the original message. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of yslee2 Sent: Tuesday, 10 May 2005 10:18 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [DDN] information society terminology - e vs i ICT vs IC Hello DDN members.. I've been lurking for a while and thought I would post a message myself. I am curious about members' thoughts on various terms we use when we discuss 'information society'. First, I would like to focus on the e vs i issue. (electronic vs information) We have been using terms such as e-govt, e-business, e-commerce, e-education/learning, e-health, etc for about 10 years now. My feeling is that this is not an accurate description and a better alternative would be to use 'i' instead of 'e'. (i-govt, i-business, i-commerce, i-education/learning, i-health, etc) Information society is not simply about 'electronification'. It is about 'informatization', which involves 'electronification' plus changing work processes (e.g. BPR : Business Process Re-engineering). Using 'government' as example : We can use the term 'i-government' as a short term for 'informatized government' or 'informatization of government'. or if the term 'informatization' is not comfortable, We can still use 'i-government' as a short term for 'ICT based government' It's interesting that in the WSIS declaration and action plan, the term 'ICT Applications' is used. But WSIS declaration and action also uses terms 'e-government, e-business, e-health, etc' This is somewhat inconsistent. On the other hand, the ITU uses the term 'e-applications'. Perhaps we can unify these terms so that we have : i-applications : to describe applications in general i-government, i-business, etc : to describe sectoral applications The WSIS also urges national governments to develop national 'e-strategies' by 2008. Perhaps a better term might be 'information strategies' or 'information society strategies' or 'i-strategies'. Second, I would like to mention ICT vs IC (information communications technology vs information communications) Here, I prefer the term 'information communications'. The term ICT is often used as it seems easier to grasp considering that without technology, the 'current' information society would not be possible. Still, 'technology' itself is not the core of information society, 'information' is. (There are many issues such as 'information privacy' which is not just about online information privacy, but is also about offline information privacy as well) Technology is something which plays supporting role in all sectors such as finance, industry, environment, transportation, health, etc. Yet, we don't say finance technology policy, envrionement technology policy, etc. We simply say finance policy, environment policy etc. The same logic should apply to information communications. It's interesting that during WSIS-1, in the initial non-paper on WSIS declaration prepared by the President of Prepcom, the title read 'Information Communications for All'. (which was later changed to 'Building the Information Society : a global challenge in the new Millennium'.) It didn't say 'Information Communications Technology for All'. On a side note, I thought 'Information Communications for All' was much better than the 'Building the Information Society : a global challenge in the new Millennium', as the latter seems to depict information society as something we pass through in the course of history rather than a permanent fixture among human activities such as health, economic, transportation, politics, social, education, etc. (e.g. Humans have always conducted 'transportation' activities, even though we didn't have 'transportation policy' till later stages of human history. Same can be said for information communications. Humans have always conducted 'information communications' activities, even though we didn't have 'information communications policy' in the modern sense till recently) It's interesting that in some countries, there is Ministry
RE: [DDN] A picture is worth a thousand words! Yup, in kilobytes
Hi Claude, And as my computer science students discovered: A picture is also worth a thousand different interpretations! :) BC @ Your Library ECU - a participant in the 2004 WA Statewide Library Marketing Campaign. Barbara Combes, Lecturer School of Computer and Information Science Edith Cowan University, Perth Western Australia Ph: (08) 9370 6072 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation. This email is confidential and intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you are notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please notify me immediately by return email or telephone and destroy the original message. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Claude Almansi Sent: Wednesday, 20 October 2004 3:32 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; The Digital Divide Network discussion group; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [DDN] A picture is worth a thousand words! Yup, in kilobytes Hi I wrote what follows in anger at an www.elearningeuropa.info forum called The Role of the New Technologies in Cultural Dialogue http://tinyurl.com/5m7ks , where all the initial posts insist on how important the use of images would be for multicultural exchanges, wondering at why so many sites are still textual, refusing the multimedia revolution. The total absence of any mention of tech limitations to access angered me, and I wrote a post entitled A picture is worth a thousand words! Yup, in kilobytes http://tinyurl.com/5qmaj : This subject line is from an actual exchange during the World Summit on Information Society http://www.itu.int/wsis/ in Geneva last December. With another participant, first met online through the Information Society: Voices from the South mailing list, we were joking about the Summit's official pages and PDFs, made huge by the addition of clumsily formatted logos and pics of personalities, offered by the organisers of WSIS with no regard for people with slow modem connections, web e-mails with scanty storage, forced to use antiquated computers in cybercafes. The most insensitive use of pictures was made by the Austrian organisers World Summit Awards http://www.wsis-award.org/ . At first, if you didn't have the shockwave pug-in, you just couldn't enter their site, because there was no alternative to their flash home page. They also produced a pdf for the nomination of experts for the award: enormous and locked. I asked them to produce a text version in several parts, as several people on the above mentioned mailing list were unable to download it, yet wanted to submit expert nominations for their countries. The organisers refused because they couldn't understand what it meant to have non hi tech internet access conditions. So I asked Andy Carvin, then working for the Benton foundation http://www.benton.org , if he could have a go. It worked. He got the separate texts forming the PDF from them and reposted them, separately and unlocked, at the Benton site. Americans are ahead of us in tech, but for them, it is just a tool, that must be adapted to the user's conditions. We Europeans all too often seem more enamoured of tech for tech's sake :-S Reading the erudite quotations about Image language provided by Pierre-Antoine Ullmo in this forum, I can't help wondering if their authors have ever been forced to use the internet in measly conditions, and what they actually know about bandwidth, hotlinking, storage, RAM capacity, CPU's, W3C accessibility rules... In About the Image http://www.elearningeuropa.info/forums.php?fPage=viewtopict=437p1=1p2 =1p3=1p4=1lng=5 , Ullmo himself writes: Quote: However the majority of applications on the web remain conventional, giving priority to the text and to a lineal and rigid reading mode. There is no real revolution of the writing process that accompanies the progress of new media. True, but only in part. Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page , probably the best online Encyclopedia, multilingual, made by users from different countries, makes abundant use of hypertext, inviting non-linear reading. The scant use of pictures is not due to conservatism, but aimed at insuring accessibility for all. The same consideration for less favorised users explains the austere look of most GNU sites. See http://www.fsf.org . As to websites made in poorer countries, there is another reason for this scant use of images: bandwidth theft. Hosting rates are calculated in function of the bandwidth used by a site. If a small association with little means can only afford a limited bandwidth, using images for its site means running the risk that someone will copy-paste them in another site: it unfortunately happens all the time, in particular in usenet sites like MSN or yahoo groups, where
